Read This Before You Upgrade To iOS 8

ios-8If you’re a user of iOS music apps, you may be excited to upgrade your device to iOS 8, which was released today.

You should generally wait to do OS upgrades, though, until your most important applications have been explicitly updated for new operating systems.

And multiple iOS developers are saying to wait to upgrade, because they’ve got updates for IOS 8 on the way, but the updates haven’t gotten through Apple’s approval process yet.

We’ve got a sampling of developer messages about the update below.

tl:dr version: Wait a week or so to upgrade to iOS 8 or some of your music apps may be hosed.

Positive Grid:

Synthetic Bits:

Omenie:

Propellerhead’s Kalle Paulsson

Harmonic Dog:

Glitchbreaks Developer Alex Matheu

Intua:

Synthe FX

Notion Music:

If you just have to upgrade now, developers recommend waiting to upgrade to iCloud Drive until OS X Yosemite is released.

And if you’ve upgraded already – leave a comment and let us know what you think of iOS 8 as a mobile msuic platform!

31 thoughts on “Read This Before You Upgrade To iOS 8”

  1. I think its conventional wisdom NOT to leap on a new software change casually. I have yet to move up to Mavericks until the maiden-voyage kinks are out of it. We’re loosely held ransom when upgrades appear, some of them disruptive, so we have every right to return the favor by moving cautiously in self-defense. I’m satisfied that Apple will continue to be largely stable and I’m sticking with OS X. Logic is my homeboy. Just remember that repenting at leisure is a double-bitch when your hard disks end up feeling like that old picture of two locomotives up in the air from having collided nose-first. Yeah, please avoid that. Remember, data not stored as at least 4 backups doesn’t really exist. 😛

    1. At this point if you’re still waiting on mavericks though you’re almost to Yosemite. You might as well skip at this point. Usually the maiden voyage phase as you put yet is figured out or at least well enough documented after one or two major updates for me though.

  2. Still waiting on Korg, IK, Moog, Retronyms, Cakewalk too. Although a slew of one-person devs have got updates that should be good with iOS 8 and the AB SDK 2.1 in the works to release in the next couple of days or weeks, or have already submitted the same to Apple – and many have responded with personal messages to affirm the same – the bigger players seem to be further behind, although even then, most of them have given some indication of updating at some point.

    For music apps too, many people keep, say, 3-4GB free to record with on their 16GB iDevices as per Cubasis’ recommendation. Now about 1G of that may be swallowed up with iOS 8 as well. That puts it under that recommendation.

    This update is going to be while before the dust settles for iPad Musicians. Kudos to the one-person teams who were ready ahead of schedule – or are in the thick of the process at the moment. Thank you.

  4. this morning i have updated my ipad air 16gb and this is the response:
    Ondes: OK (it’s the only synth app that works)
    Animoog: Ko!
    iPolisix: Ko!
    Reactable:Ko!

  5. my experience is that not updating at all is best and will make your idevice live longer. you won’t be able to get new versions/features of any app (well most of them) though and that sucks. so it’s either stick with what you have and get the most out of your devices lifetime or update and be forced at one point to change it while still perfectly in shape hardware-wise.

  6. Just upgraded to iOS8. All I know is that icon for the health app is seriously ugly. Better be a way to delete it off the home screen. Going back to bed.

  8. Now we find the “F” out? Lol. What about all the Audiobus apps that worked before that no longer work now? Will there be a fix for that?

    1. First time you’ve checked the internet in the past few weeks? AB developers and numerous users have been pointing this out for literally months now- apps need to update to the newest AB SDK to work with AB in iOS 8.

    1. Mostly, I agree with this sentiment, although I don’t know if “lazy” is the right word (maybe “overwhelmed”). Devs have a lot of time to fix bugs before the OS goes to consumer. It’s a really bad experience to have your app break on people. Much better to fix it ahead of time and have a one-time pop-up that says, “Our app is iOS 8 ready, but please contact us if you find any problems you missed.”

      Apple encourages people to upgrade quickly to get the new features, and people do. Way better than Android, which upgrades in horribly slow dribbles and drabs across devices and carriers. And I’m no Apple fanatic. I have a Samsung Galaxy I love. I’m mostly a Swype fanatic.

  11. This always happens. Not updated yet, still on iOS 7.

    The wise wait for everyone to get their update act together before installing new iOS versions:)

    1. I think it’s wiser to dump the products that try to force you to be two versions behind in the operating system of one of your primary use devices. Nobody is that special.

  12. I use these transitionary periods to assess the ability and intention of developers to make timely updates, and from those results I choose what products to purchase and rely on going forward, regardless of how cool their products are.

    We are decades into software development now. This is not a new thing anymore. Apple seeds the new OS to developers months in advance. Of course there are last minute bugs and issues that arise, but the majority of the dev work for an OS transition can be done well in advance of the release date. Also, devs know quite well that you need to stack time for release after completion on any platform, not just Apple, so to submit at the last minute and blame it on the publisher is not a valid argument. Taking all this into account, any developer that doesn’t release an update within short order signals that they either don’t really care to stay current, or that they don’t have the capacity to stay current. Either one is a red flag to me, and I tend to avoid their products going forward, even if they are exceptional in other ways. Case in point, Moog releasing an update a couple weeks ago to finally give full iOS7 compatibility, right on the eve of the iOS8 launch.

    The worst offenders of this are usually the biggest companies with the most resources, such as Avid, Adobe, Autodesk, etc. Not only do they usually take months to update, but they charge you a full point release for it. Antiquated, baked in software development processes to support an aging difficult to maintain code base, driven by an intention to squeeze every dollar out of the consumer while hamstringing them from exploring other options is always a recipe for a dead end street at some point.

    1. Oh, and before someone says the inevitable “software development is hard”… yes. Yes it is. But if that’s what you DO, then DO IT! 🙂 Getting to the moon was hard, but the moon didn’t move closer to the earth to help us.

        1. That’s flawed thinking. It’s like buying a car and then expecting that you “deserve” a place to park it simply because you paid for it. If a software company makes a product, they KNOW that operating systems are going to change, and they know months in advance. To not plan for that or not respect that users will be migrating for many reasons is like selling rotten fruit, or a car without tires, or a lifelong subscription to something that actually ends in few months. The migration plan absolutely has to be part of the fundamental business strategy, and in fact, if you stay out in front of it the new features offered by the OS update (and the inevitable obsoleteness of your slower competitors) virtually guarantees you an edge in the market.

          Sure, they need money to stay in business. But making a product that stops working is the opposite of doing that. Support users to develop trust, then offer features and content at reasonable IAP. And every so often, sell a new version for a fair price while adding more products to generate a long tail of revenue. But digging in your heels and pretending OS updates don’t happen, or that your software alone is so special that it will stop a user from updating and using all their other apps is nothing short of delusional. New development companies will never again be able to develop the monopoly muscle it takes to get users to put up with anything other than modernity, and the legacy products have been bleeding customers until they change their policies or become irrelevant.

          1. What’s so so special about the last few iOS updates except for slowing everything down and giving you some pretty icons?
            i hope you drop your new iphone.

            1. >i hope you drop your new iPhone.

              Wow, you are indeed a class act! Thanks for lashing out like that. 🙂 At least since you turned to personal attacks we both agree that your points were effectively invalidated.

  13. MultiTrack Daw is hosed. When I updated and then opened it. It crashed and then the App Store says it needs to be updated again. Never seen that before. I’m sure it will be fixed. I’m patient.

  15. just of today:

    iphone 5s
    ko: sunrizer XS, minimapper, DM1
    ok: magellan jr, animoog

    ipad mini retina
    ko: animoog, DM1, midibridge
    ok: sunrizer, magellan, thor, imini, isem, nanologue, audiobus

    some apps have issues connecting to audiobus.

  16. Help!! So, I waited 5 months and updated to i.os8 finally yest morning. Now GarageBand won’t control my good old Kurzweil keyboard through the midi input at all. Any suggestions???

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